About Me

Lift your lamp beside the golden door, Break not the golden rule, avoid well the golden calf, know; not all that glitters is gold, and laissez faire et laissez passer [let do and let pass] but as a shining sentinel, hesitate not to ring the bell,
defend the gates, and man the wall

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVIII: Manners 1781

The particular customs and manners that may happen to be received in that state?
It is difficult to determine on the standard by which the manners of a nation may be tried, whether catholic, or particular.
It is more difficult for a native to bring to that standard the manners
of his own nation, familiarized to him by habit. There must doubtless
be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people produced by the
existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and
slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most
unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the
other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an
imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From
his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. If
a parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy or his
self-love, for restraining the intemperance of passion towards his
slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present.
But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks
on, catches the lineaments [1] of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle
of smaller slaves, gives a loose to his worst of passions, and thus
nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped
by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can
retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with
what execration [2] should the statesman be loaded, who permitting one half
the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms
those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the
one part, and the amor patriae of the other. For if a slave can have a
country in this world, it must be any other in preference to that in
which he is born to live and labour for another: in which he must lock
up the faculties of his nature, contribute as far as depends on his
individual endeavours to the evanishment of the human race, or entail
his own miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from
him. With the morals of the people, their industry also is destroyed.
For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make
another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of
slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labour. And can
the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their
only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these
liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but
with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God
is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering
numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of
fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may
become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no
attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.--But it is
impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the
various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and
civil. We must be contented to hope they will force their way into every
one’s mind. I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of
the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the
slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope
preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and
that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of
the masters, rather than by their extirpation [3].

[1] lineaments an outline, a distinctive feature or characteristic, or contour of a body or figure and especially of a face[2] execration the act of cursing or denouncing; also : the curse so uttered.[3]extirpation To pull up by the roots. Local extermination.